Robert (Bob) George Rottner

Bob was born in Ray Brook on June 22, 1942, to George and Catherine (Henaghan) Rottner. During her prenatal care, Catherine was diagnosed with TB and she and George relocated to Ray Brook where she was a patient at the Tuberculosis Sanatorium. She was permitted a short visit to Brooklyn to bid George farewell just ahead of his Atlantic crossing to Europe for WWII. Sadly, on the very same day George was underway, smoke from a brush fire, just outside of the Henaghan family home, compromised Catherine’s breathing and took her life. Four-month-old Bob was to spend the next three years with his grandparents in Brooklyn until his father’s return from WWII.

George lived and worked in Ray Brook while Catherine was a patient at the TB Sanitarium. He fell in love with Ray Brook and the surrounding Adirondacks. Soon after the war, he returned to Ray Brook and lodged at the Marino Cottages with Bob. George began work in the area with the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCP) and the New York state Department of Environmental Conservation. He also began to date and soon after married Ellen Carey, Catharine’s former primary care nurse.

George, Ellen and Bob Rottner relocated to Bloomingdale, where over the next two decades Bob would be joined by five siblings: Rosemary, Diane, Chris, Shaun and Eric.

Bob graduated from Saranac Lake High School in June of 1960, where he excelled at track and field. Carrying on in his father’s military tradition, Bob enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corp. after graduation. He served four years, and among the more interesting missions he shared of his time in the Corp. was serving as a photo interpreter during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

As everyone knows, you never stop being a Marine. Bob lived the remainder of his life supporting his “brothers and sisters” in the Marines as well as all who have served in the Armed Forces, especially those who found themselves suffering from alcohol addiction, something Bob understood firsthand.

Just like his father, Bob chose to return to the Adirondacks following his years of service. He was an avid outdoorsman, a licensed Adirondack guide, hunter, trapper, fisherman, Boy Scout and Explorer adult leader. He loved to hike, paddle and cross-country ski and enjoyed them even more when introducing others to those lifestyle pursuits. Those skills were used while working at Camp Topridge, Marjory Merriweather Post’s lavish Adirondack Great Camp on St. Regis Lake. As a “boatman and guide” it even landed him on the photo pages of the Nov. 5, 1965, issue of “Life” magazine. It was at Topridge where Bob met and married Norwegian born Solveig Enersen on Sept. 12, 1964.

It is now among the “Legends of Bob Rottner” that he and Solveig asked Mrs. Post (Sol was Mrs. Post’s year-round private maid) for permission to use the staff lunchroom to host their wedding reception. Mrs. Post said: “No, you may not, you may however use the entire camp.” A wonderful favor from the then “Richest Woman in the World.”

Bob and Sol would find themselves working and living just a short distance down the shoreline from Topridge at the Trevor Family estate on St. Regis Lake. Their daughter Kristin was born at Saranac Lake General Hospital on July 26, 1967. Bob then “moved on up,” as they say, to caretake on the 28,000-acre Bay Pond Park just outside of Paul Smiths owned by William Rockefeller III heiress, Wilhelmina du Pont Ross.

It was a wonderful life there but over time the “wilderness tug” of even grander adventures compelled Bob to take his family to Alaska in 1980.

Bob worked in several fields over the decade that he lived in Alaska, including the National Forest Service on Kodiak Island as a park ranger, the Mobile Oil Co., supporting oil exploration teams on “Cat Trains” on the ice above the Artic Circle and concluding with operations in the Bering Sea and Pacific Ocean on fishing vessels owned by a large Japanese commercial fishing company.

It was during these years that a disease — an addiction, known commonly to us all as alcoholism — would claim several important aspects of Bob’s life. It cost him his marriage to Solveig and his relationship with his daughter Kristin. It took Bob years and countless AA meetings and sponsors to become and remain sober. He was vocal with his immediate family in his final years about how much he regretted the impact his drinking had on his family and close friends. But he gave back! For the next 20-plus years Bob was active in and lead AA meetings and was a sponsor for countless individuals who were addicted to alcohol and other drugs.

Bob relocated to the “Lower 48” first living in Oregon in the early ’90s, where he met and married Paula Short. Bob remarried Iris Rasmussen on Jan. 8, 1998, in North Powder, Oregon. They relocated to Arizona for a number of years before returning closer to “home” to Philadelphia, New York in 2014. Bob lost Iris in 2018 in a fatal fall in their home. Not long after that tragedy, Bob returned to his hometown, Bloomingdale, where the great team at the Overlook Senior Living Center helped him enjoy the last several years of his life.

In his simple “wooden document box” was recently found a wrinkled-up piece of paper, 2-inches high by 7.5-inches wide … the bottom portion of a standard piece of paper. This is what was typed under a heading of “Awards/Activities.”

— Award of Merit: National American Red Cross- Saving Human Life. (This is the highest award of the National Red Cross, and the certificate bears the original signature of the president of the U.S.)

— Cited by U.S. Congress for Heroism

— Community Service: 1980 Olympic Nordic Ski Patrol

–Fire Warden for New York state, 1965-1980

— Boy Scouts of America, Adult Leader

— EMT #1, National #533582

— Alaska Bush EMT, Search and Rescue Team Leader.

“Saving a Human Life” … not an insignificant life affirming event. Bob, risking his own life, rescued a drowning man on June 1, 1976, who had capsized his canoe and was under great distress. He was in the middle of Lower St. Regis Lake near Paul Smiths, the capsized canoe drifting away from the victim in the wind. Water temperatures in the late Adirondack spring are in the low to mid-50 degrees Fahrenheit and perilous without a life vest. The victim had lost his prescription glasses and was in full panic. Bob and his wife Solveig spotted him from shore and Bob instinctively (not everybody’s instincts) swam to him with a boat seat cushion taken from a nearby boathouse. The act was witnessed by several individuals, and they confirmed the entire event took close to an hour to complete.

So, for service in the skies over Cuba as a U.S. Marine in the ’60s to saving a life in the mid ’70s to decades of service to AA, we call Robert Rottner a hero. He was too humble to ever declare himself so, but he can’t stop us now. Robert (Bob) George Rottner was a hero and a legend! Don’t even get us started on trying to tell you his many, many tales. A high percentage of them are all almost 100% true. Bob is survived by his daughter, Kristin Catherine Moen of Norway, and his grandchildren Brandon Trung Moen and Rebecca Catherine Moen of Norway and predeceased by his granddaughter Melissa Moen of Norway.

A Celebration of Life will take place to honor Bob on Saturday, June 17 at 1 p.m. in the upper hall of the Bloomingdale Volunteer Fire Department … right next door to the former Rotter Family Home and just across state Route 3 from the Hometown Heroes memorial flag that honors Bobs Service to the Nation. RIP Brother Bob!